


my head is an animal

by electrumqueen



Series: Spartacus: Panem et Circenses [3]
Category: Spartacus Series (TV), Spartacus: Blood and Sand
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-15
Updated: 2013-03-15
Packaged: 2017-12-05 10:06:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/721834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/electrumqueen/pseuds/electrumqueen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Hunger Games</i> fusion. It's Agron's second-to-last year.</p>
            </blockquote>





	my head is an animal

_“This_ is our champion?" Duro mutters, shuffling from foot to foot. Mandatory Victory Tour attendance makes everybody restless.  
  
"Shut up," Agron says, "that's  _Spartacus._ "  
  
He’s tall and lean - not as tall as Agron and Duro, but they’re tall - and there’s something in his eyes, something lost and haunted and full of a rage that makes Agron shiver, just a little.  
  
“He looks bigger on TV,” Duro muttters.   
  
Agron elbows him. “A 20-foot screen will do that.”  
  
  
  
It's Agron's second-to-last year. He's almost unhappy about it; when he ages out of the tesserae it'll be less tesserae and, in a worst-case scenario - well, better not to tempt fate, but if it's going to be any of his mother's sons who go into the arena it'll be Agron.  
  
Duro says, "You've got that look on your face."  
  
"What look?"  
  
Duro raises an eyebrow. "The one where you've tried to think and it's a bit difficult."  
  
"Shut up," Agron says, cuffs him round the head.  
  
They slide into the crowd and the two years between them divides them too far, an unbreachable gap.   
  
  
  
Batiatus says Duro’s name and Agron does not even  _think._  “I volunteer,” he’s saying, shouting, cutting through the crowd before the ice can hit his veins, before Duro can get to the stage.  
  
Spartacus’ eyes widen and he smiles, a little, clasps Agron’s forearm. “That was brave,” he says.  
  
 _You’re a fucking idiot_ , Duro mouths. There’s all this fear in his eyes.  
  
The crowd is entirely quiet. Maybe it isn’t; maybe that is just the sound of Agron’s heart, deafening.  
  
He bows for the cameras.  _We who are about to die salute you._  
  
  
  
Duro punches him in the shoulder: not very hard, not hard enough for anything to bruise. “You fucking  _idiot._ I don’t need you to save me-”  
  
“Shut up,” Agron mutters. Duro is too large now to fit comfortably in his arms but there is a rightness to it, to him. He smells like soap and charcoal. “I’m sorry.”  
  
Their mother kisses his hair. “Oh, Agron,” she whispers, voice cracking, “please come back.”  
  
  
  
The train isn’t loud, mechanically. He’d thought it would be - the mine machinery is loud. The Capitol can afford better, probably.  
  
The girl spends all her time sobbing. She reminds him of his sisters: he thinks he could put his arm around her, could say _it will be okay,_  but he doesn’t lie to them and he won’t to her.  
  
Spartacus sits beside him. “Listen,” he says, low, urgent, “I need you to tell me what you can do.”  
  
Agron says, “I,” and then he shakes his head, “we used to go past the Meadow for firewood, for game.”  
  
  
  
Agron did not know Spartacus, before. Agron was Seam and the boy who would be Spartacus was something else, something half-wild, something - free.  
  
Nobody thought he would win.  
  
Now, Agron thinks, blisters on his hands from relentless drills with sword, bow, axe, it is a wonder that anyone thought Spartacus wouldn’t.   
  
The weight of Spartacus’ gaze falls heavy on his shoulders.  
  
"I want to get you home," he says.  
  
Agron does not think Spartacus is the sort of person you can say  _no_ to.  
  
  
  
In a way, the Careers make it easier. It is the Careers who slit the throat of Twelve’s girl at the Cornucopia, so fast that Agron cannot even cradle her body; the Careers who decapitate Six’s fourteen-year-old boy who looked at Agron like Duro had. Agron knows how to stay alive in a forest arena, and he knows vengeance.   
  
It is easy to think of them as wolves at a fresh kill; easier, certainly, than to think of them as children who fall beneath his knife, his hand.   
  
Blood always looks the same. But there is nothing you can do about that.  
  
  
  
Spartacus says, “Hey,” and Agron opens his eyes and there is the hand on his shoulder, warm, careful.  
  
“Congratulations,” Batiatus says. His eyes gleam dark, satisfied.  
  
Agron turns his face away, into the clean laundry smell of Spartacus’ shirt: the arena was dirt and blood and he is-finally clean, it seems. (Never clean. you will never be clean again.)  
  
“You won,” Spartacus says, and his voice is so kind, so sad, Agron wants to weep.  
  
  
  
“Welcome back,” Duro says, and he smells like soap and charcoal and Agron never ever wants to let go. “I knew you’d make it,” he adds, muffled by Agron’s shirt.  
  
“You’re a shitty fucking liar,” Agron says. His face hurts. He has never smiled so wide in his life.  
  
  
  
“Hey, neighbour,” Agron says, leaning out the window of the new beautiful house in Victor’s Village.  
  
Spartacus half-smiles, waves: the only other occupant, in all the village. “You want a drink?”  
  
They sit in his front room, immaculately appointed, painstakingly beautiful. There’s whiskey in a wide translucent glass, amber against Agron’s skin. “This is strange,” Agron says.  
  
Spartacus sighs. “I’m sorry,” he says, “winning isn’t- it’s not a good thing. It might have been kinder if you hadn’t.”  
  
Agron shakes his head. “I have a family,” he says. “I couldn’t  _not.”_  
  
Spartacus’ exhale is quiet, ancient; an overgrown city’s last sigh before collapse. “I had a family, once.”  
  
  
  
“They’re telling stories about you in the capitol,” Batiatus tells Agron. “There are posters. You and your little brother; everyone’s swooning.”  
  
“Oh,” Agron says.  
  
Spartacus’ weight is firm, solid at the back of him. “Is there something you need?”  
  
An eyebrow, raised. “There’s something I  _want.”_  
  
  
  
The woman is bright blue and there are feathers under the skin of her arms and Agron  _cannot_   _get it up_.  
  
  
  
“I don’t understand,” he tells Spartacus after, “I don’t-”  
  
Spartacus says, “They want you to forget that you were ever anything other than theirs.” There is a faint, defiant twist to his mouth.  
  
“I have a  _family,”_  Agron whispers. He went to the arena for Duro; this is not so much worse.  
  
“They know that,” Spartacus says, and there is this very, very slight crack in his voice.  
  
  
  
“It’s the Capitol,” Duro says, soft, deadly, “It’s the Capitol that’s the problem. We don’t  _need them.”_  
  
“No,” Agron says, “Duro-”  
  
  
  
The view from the stage is different when you are no longer the sacrificial lamb on it. Everyone looks smaller.  
  
“Duro,” Batiatus says.  
  
Spartacus’ arm is across Agron’s chest, the only thing keeping him in place.  
  
“No,” he says, “you can’t.”  
  
Everything is red but it is Spartacus’ voice, Spartacus who has never steered him wrong.  
  
  
  
“Agron,” says his mother, desperate.  
  
“I’m going to bring you home,” Agron swears. He thinks maybe he has forgotten how to breathe.  
  
Duro’s pale, too pale. “There you go,” he says, all hollow half-smile, “always taking credit for things you didn’t do.”  
  
  
  
The Capitol is writhing, seething, filthy and hideous. It was almost easier when it was the arena he had to go in.  
  
Spartacus murmurs, “This is for your brother,” and Agron grits his teeth and follows his lead.  
  
  
  
“I can’t let my brother outdo me,” Duro grins, for the interviewer.  
  
Agron knows his brother, knows the tightness around his eyes, in his voice.  
  
“I love you,” Agron says, “don’t forget that.”  
  
  
  
“I think he can do it,” Batiatus says. “Probably. There’s a good fucking chance.”  
  
It is like he is trying to be thoughtful, considerate, but it doesn’t really work, on him.  
  
  
  
The televisions are all huge here. The volumes are all the way up.  
  
Agron is very, very drunk.  
  
“Don’t look,” Spartacus says, and it’s so kind, so terrible.  
  
Agron does not see it but he hears it and it is so, so loud.


End file.
